


Where the Blood Just Barely Dried

by indevan



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 14:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13009590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: There’s a box of photographs that he isn’t allowed to touch but he sees his mother take them out and cry.  He wants to look and see the photos, see what makes his mother so sad, but he fears that she’ll find out and be even more upset





	Where the Blood Just Barely Dried

**Author's Note:**

> i have so many other wips but my mind only wanted to get this out so here we are

During moments of quiet, Trunks sits with his mom in what remains of her lab.  Their house used to be nicer, she said, big and sprawling and taking up several city blocks.  Now most of the buildings are charred shells and the gardens are dead and withered, the animals in the menagerie long dead or escaped into the mountains.

He doesn’t know what she’s working on.  Sometimes she draws blueprints or sometimes she just hits machines with a wrench.  He thinks that maybe she isn’t working on anything but wants to distract herself.  When she doesn’t know he’s there, she cries.  There’s a box of photographs that he isn’t allowed to touch but he sees his mother take them out and cry.  He wants to look and see the photos, see what makes his mother so sad, but he fears that she’ll find out and be even more upset.

Today he lies on a bare table in the lab with his chin in his hands.  His legs kick back and forth and his tail flicks along with them.  Trunks very much likes his tail.

“Did papa have a tail?” he asked once.

“Yes, although it was long gone by the time you were born.”

It’s hard to get his mother to talk about his father.  He has to ask directly, sometimes more than once, and even when he does get answers, it’s things like that, which only give him more questions.

“What happened to it?”

“It got cut off.”

Today he doesn’t bother her.  His mother looks tense, worried.  Her shoulders are bunched up near her ears and on the radio he can hear another report about destruction caused by the androids.  It’s all the stations say anymore.  Update after update.  Death after death.  At night, Trunks can hear the static in his head while he lies awake in bed.

He stays on the table, watching the shadow of his tail move back and forth behind him.  He knows now not to touch it.  One time he did and he felt suddenly weak and tired.  It’s weird, his tail, but he likes it because it means he has something in common with his father.

His mother turns the ratchet wrench over and over on the same nuts and bolts.  Tighter and tighter.

“Mom?”

Her hand relaxes on the wrench.  She turns and has a smile on her face, the one that’s coated in plastic.  He’s seen his mother’s real smile and this isn’t it.

“Yes, baby?”

“You said I can’t look at the full moon or else I’ll turn into a big, scary monster, right?”

“Yes, baby.”

Trunks rolls onto his back and frames one of the flickering lights of the lab with his hands.

“If I did that, do you think I could fight the androids?”

He hears the wrench clatter to the floor.  He flips back onto his stomach.  His mother’s gloved hands are shaking and he sees her jam them in the pockets of her thick overalls.

“No.”

Her tone is resolute, brooking no arguing.

“You will not fight them.” Her voice is tight, strangled. “Do you hear me?”

He nods and ducks his head.

“Yes, I hear you.”

He watches the shadow of his tail droop.

\--

It isn’t often that he gets to leave his house and go into the city--or what’s left of it.  It’s dangerous to try, even if the androids have mostly gotten bored with West City.  There’s an air to it, barren and lifeless.  They drive by the park with its dry, crackly grass and dead trees.  When he was born, his mother ran through that park with him in his stroller, telling her friend Yamcha that she read that babies who see the world go by fast that young are better adjusted.

His mother avoids town but they need shampoo and soap and toilet paper.  Trunks leans out of the speeder and watches the buildings zoom by.  Most of them look like Capsule Corps: crumbling, hollowed out, devoid of life.  He knows why they stay inside.  It doesn’t have to do with the androids, it’s to avoid seeing this.

Life goes on, which is good, he thinks.  His mom says that no one bounces back better than humans.  It’s been a decade and, while it’s always been normal for Trunks, this is still new to them.

Someone at the store sees his tail and mentions he remembers seeing a boy at the martial arts tournament with a tail like his.  He’s an old timer, maybe like mom’s weird old man friend who hides in that submarine in the ocean.  Trunks smiles because it’s the nice thing to do, but his mom looks upset by his words.

When they’re in the speeder and driving home, he asks her.

“Was the boy with the tail who fought at that tournament papa?”

He isn’t sure what he thought her reaction would be but it isn’t laughter.  He doesn’t remember when he last heard her laugh so it catches him off guard.

“No, no.  It was the one I told you about.”

Son Goku.  The hero that could have saved them all if a virus hadn’t taken him down too soon.  He wonders if he’s in his mother’s hidden photographs.  Or if his father is.

“Why did he have a tail, then?”

It’s a question about his father, but a roundabout one.  Her laughter peters off.

“Goku and your father were from the same race of aliens--Saiyans.  They have tails.”

“I’m half-alien?  Half-Saiyan?” The word sounds good in his mouth.

She nods.  It’s the most he’s ever gotten.

“Does that mean Gohan is, too.”

Another nod.

He rests his arms on the side of the speeder, picturing Gohan.  He’s their savior, their hero.  He’s probably some kind of angel, Trunks thinks, and he looks like a hero from a novel.  He likes that they have this shared heritage, this connection.  He feels closer to him.

He turns back to look at his tail curled behind him and smiles.

\--

Trunks flies off even though his mother tells him not to, even though he promised not to fight.  It isn’t a full moon, it’s the middle of the day in a small town not far from West City.  He can feel fighting there already--Gohan and the androids.

He flies low to the ground, keeping his energy suppressed.  He makes sure his tail is secured around his waist.

The greatest concentration of energy is at the heart of the city, in a park.  Trunks flies past bits of old statues and overturned benches and thinks that this place might have been nice once.  Trees are blackened, burned, and some are gone completely, leaving nothing but a black starburst on the scarred ground.

Seeing the androids is always a shock.  They’re so normal-looking it’s hard to believe that they’re capable of such evil.  Gohan is fighting them both off, putting his arms up barely in time to stave off their perfectly timed and coordinated attacks.

“Gohan!” he calls.

He turns and a look of fear passes over his face.

“What are you doing here?”

His voice sounds strangled, like his mother’s sometimes does, but.  He’s fighting.  He’s happy he’s here, Trunks is sure of it.

“I can fight!”

Gohan parries a kick from Android 18 and sends her flying back.  17 flies to catch her and they share a bemused look.  Trunks hates them for it.

“You’re too young,” he insists.

“I’m eleven!  I can fight.  Just like you.”

“No!  You will  _ not _ be me!  Go home, Trunks!”

He shakes his head and flies to stand by his side.

“I’m not leaving.”

The ensuing fight is a blur.  The androids regroup and come at them both.  He can hear their sarcastic, quiet voices only barely over the pounding of blood in his head and the sizzle in the air from ki blasts.

And then they’re gone.  The androids get bored and just leave to cause more destruction elsewhere.  Trunks blinks through the blood in his eyes and wants to cry.  He held him back.  He couldn’t help.  Gohan is on his feet, injured, but strong and sure and.  He only got in his way.  Trunks stands up and nearly falls over.  He turns and sees a spot of blood on the small of his back.

“No!” he screams.

Gohan is at his side, pressing his hands to his arm and looking into his eyes.

“Are you hurt?”

“My tail.”

Trunks tears away from him and scours the ground.  He feels the pain from bruises already blossoming purple and yellow on his skin but he doesn’t care.  He has to find it.  He has to.  Has to.

His tail lies limply in a pile of blood.  The fur is charred and patches of skin show.  He reaches for it and feels tears roll down his face.  They’re hot, so hot that they have to be boiling, have to be scalding his skin, leaving visible tracks of pink and red.

“Trunks.  We have to go.”

Now Gohan’s voice is gentle and too kind.  He shouldn’t have come here.  He got in the way and lost his tail.

“I need it!” he says, ending his words with a choked sob. “Please.  I need it back.”

Gohan puts a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s gone.  I’m sorry.  You need to get patched up.  You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

He tears away from him and the world tilts.  He’s on his stomach, sprawled out and reaching for the lost appendage.

“I have to get it back,” he cries. “It’s all I got from him!”

Gohan’s voice quiets behind him.  Trunks feels himself lifted up into his arms and, before he loses consciousness, the last thing he feels is the familiar breeze that blows against his face when he’s flying.

\--

Waking up without a tail is odd.  It takes a moment for the sadness to set in, for the fact that he lost what he and his father had in common.  The weirdness of walking without it.  His mother is upset but she’s locked herself in her lab, drawing blueprints on a new project.  Gohan is in their living room when Trunks walks out of the infirmary.  He has the box of photographs on the table and he stands completely still.

The photographs are precious.  They can’t touch them.

“Come here,” he says gently. “Sit with me.”

He can’t deny Gohan anything so he sits.  His back hurts and his body is achey, bruised, and beaten.  He isn’t ready to fight the androids and yet.  Yet.

“Here.”

Gohan passes him a photograph from the box.

“It’s the only one.”

He doesn’t accept it at first, still afraid to touch it.  Instead, Trunks stares at the decade old photograph in his hands.  In it, a man is glowering at the camera as if he’s begrudging the person holding it for taking his picture.  He takes it from Gohan and looks at the man’s face.

“That’s your father.” Gohan swallows and gives a short, hard laugh. “I talked to your mom.  She’s worried about seeing you like this so I said I’d do it.  Show you him, I mean.  What he looked like.  And how the tail isn’t all you have in common.”

He examines the photograph and he can see the similarities.  Other than hair and eyes, Trunks realizes that he’s a carbon copy of him.  He presses the photograph to his chest.  He knows better than to ask if he can keep it.  The photograph is his mother’s, along with the others in the box.

After Gohan leaves, he walks to the lab.  He’s still unsteady on his feet, not having his tail to balance him, but he makes it.  His mother is bent over a table, drawing something with a pencil.  When she sees him, he expects a wry comment but her face crumples.  Trunks goes to her, lets her take him into her arms.

“Baby…”

“It’s gone,” he says.

“I know.”

He thinks of the glimpse of other photographs he saw in the box along with the picture of his father.

“They all are.”

His mother’s arms tighten around him.

“I know.”

She holds him for a long time, longer than he thinks she’s ever held him.  Her body is shaking as if all of the tears she keeps hidden from him are threatening to come out.

“Do you want to see them?” she asks finally.

Trunks nods, rubs his nose against her overalls.  His mother leads him back into the living room, leads him back to the box.

“Here’s Gohan when he was little,” she says because it’s easier to start with him.  He’s still here. “That’s his dad.”

His father.  The savior everyone missed.  The one who, if he had lived, would make sure that their world wouldn’t be like this.  Trunks looks at him.  He doesn’t look like much but he believes his mother, he trusts her.

“This is Yamcha.  I’ve told you a little about him.  We used to date but we ended up being better as friends.  He found someone else.”

“And you found papa?”

She casts her eyes down and cracks the tiniest smile.  He can’t tell what kind of smile it is, but it isn’t a happy one.

“I did.”

Trunks looks at the new photo passed to him.  This man is smiling in the photo and dark hair is tumbling over one shoulder.  He has one arm hooked around the neck of another man who looks caught off-guard as if he didn’t expect to be in the shot.  In the corner, there’s a young boy...or maybe a doll?  Trunks can’t be sure.

“That’s Tien and Chiaotzu.” His mother pauses. “I don’t have any pictures of Piccolo and you’ve seen the only one of your father.”

Trunks nods even though he wants to see it again.  The scowling man with the same forehead and nose as him.  His mother is quiet for one beat and then another.  This is clearly hard for her.  She reaches in and takes out another photo.

“This is Krillin.  He was  _ so  _ funny.  He could make you laugh like nobody else.”

He nods, smiling at the photo, but his mind is still on the picture of his father.

\--

There is nothing normal about the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.  Everything is heavy and barren.  It’s a void with no end.  A vast wasteland where sometimes his only company is the static in his head.  No radio now, just buzzing in Trunks’s ears at all time.  Anxiety, fear--Cell is worse than the androids.  His fears have a new face, a new name.  Nightmares choke him more frequently now, coming even more frequently than they had when Gohan died.  He wakes up in his bed in the chamber, clutching his throat and gasping for air.

He has no concept of days or nights, just when his body needs rest.  This is time he counts as night because his joints ache and his muscles burn and he wants nothing more than to sink into the bath.  He pulls his shirt off, careful to push his hair out of the way.  It’s getting long but there’s nothing to cut it with in here and, if there were, he doesn’t trust his own hand to make it even.

He doesn’t dare think of asking his father to do it for him.

It’s as he’s stepping out of his pants does he hear him speak.  Trunks hadn’t even heard him come up.  He trained so long, so hard, it was almost like he refused to rest.

“You had one, too, then.”

Trunks turns, sheepishly holding his pants in front himself.

“What?”

“A tail,” his father says “You had one.  Did the Bulma from your universe cut it off, too, like she did with your counterpart here?”

He sounds angry as he says it, like he always does, but there’s a weird measure of hurt in his voice. It makes Trunks think about how he cherished his tail and the connection it gave him to his father.  He reflexively puts the hand not holding his pants to the small of his back to where the scar is.  The androids had left an awkward stump but his mother had helped cut it the rest of the way off and now all that was left was a round mark that made him hiss in pain when he pulled his pants up too fast.

“No.  The androids blew it off.”

To his surprise, his father lifts half of his mouth in a semblance of a smile.

“Good.  If a tail has to be lost, it’s best to lose it in battle.”

If he didn’t know better, he thinks he sounds a bit proud.  Trunks nods his head, knowing that the conversation is now over.  He sinks into the balmy water and closes his eyes.  When he’s sure his father isn’t looking, he smiles to himself.

**Author's Note:**

> http://vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
